Ghost Media

Year End: Jumping the Gun Edition

The whole "year-end" thing has been getting on my nerves this year.  My main complaint is that it is like Christmas at department stores....it starts about 6 weeks before it should.  To that end I've been steadfast in holding out until the actual year end to put out any sort of list.  My other complaint involves the fact that 80% of lists seem to revolve around the same handful of artists, which in my mind kind of ruins the whole point of the "diversity" of blogs.  We all get the fact that TV on the Radio is fucking awesome.  Printing it for the 1200th time does no one any good. 

BUT....i digress.  The point to this post is that the Marathon Packs Blog has put together four year-end mixes that I think everyone should download.  They are completely and utterly bad ass.  And if you are overwhelmed with all of the names being thrown around on "best of" lists  and albums you "must check out", this is a godsend.  The mixes, all four of them, can be found right here.  There is a slight pain-in-the-ass factor.  Because they spend a lot of time on really perfect transitions, each mix is packaged as an individual mp3 file.  i.e. tracks are not separated.  But it's a small price to pay for some amazing mixes.

Technical note:  Because of high demand they had to stop hosting the files and put them on a "yousendit" server.  These download in some odd format that iTunes will not open.  There is a simple fix.  Just open the file properties, and add ".mp3" to the end of the file name. 

James Brown R.I.P.

The Godfather of Soul passed away in an Atlanta hospital today. He was 73 years old.

TV on the Radio Playing Two Shows at Metro, Cold War Kids at Subterranean

Best-of-list darlings TV on the Radio announced a sizable spring tour today, including March 12th and 13th at The Metro .  No word on the on-sale date.  For the complete list of tour dates click the "continue reading" link.  Subterranean will be hosting Cold War Kids on March 9th.

Tapes n' Tapes Gets Pinched n' Pinched Down Under

"on friday, only a few hours before we were scheduled to fly home from perth, we got robbed. our van was parked at city beach (right outside of perth, australia), while we were taking a brief frolic in the indian ocean. our tour manager left the van unattended for about 10 minutes, and when we came back, someone had pried open a window and stole a lot of our personal belongings. Luckily very little of our gear was stolen (only 2 big muff distortion pedals, one boss loop station, one DW9000 kick drum pedal, and a tambourine). But our personal belongings did not fair so well. One of our passports was stolen, two mac laptops were stolen, one digital camera, all of josh's clothes, one blackberry, two cell phones, and all sorts of various inconvenient personal effects (glasses, keys, wallets, shoes, etc.). So far nothing has been recovered by the police. One of us is still stuck in Australia, sorting out passport details, but hopefully that should be resolved in the next 48hrs. The biggest thing that we lost from all of this was years worth of photos and other sentimental stuff stored on the two computers that were stolen. we'll probably never see any of these things again, but in the off chance that any of you might come across any of it, we've added some descriptive information below. thanks to everyone who's already helped us out with all of this."

Hidden Cameras Cancel Subterranean Show, Others...

Well, the era of the Tiny-Brained Administration my have been dealt a mighty blow in the last election, but their imbecilic policies still reverberate.  In what has become an all too common situation for musicians, The Hidden Cameras have been turned back at the Canadian border, and were forced to cancel three shows, including tonight's scheduled gig at Subterranean .

From the band's website: :

"Due to problems at the American border, the Minneapolis, Chicago, and Cleveland shows have been cancelled. The band is sorry to disappoint all the fans in those three cities."
         

             
             

What the Hell is CMJ?

Every fall when the entire music industry heads to NYC for "CMJ" I get my fair share of questions as to exactly what CMJ is and what they do. To that end, check out this article, which explains the organization and why they're important in detail.

Back Atcha'....

Time Out New York has a piece where members of the music community rate the various NYC critics.  The findings aren't all that interesting in the end, but it's worth a read.  Check it out here.

The Alright Ma's

I don't know a damn thing about The Alright Ma's.  They have no website, no bio to speak of, no tour dates and to buy the album you're directed to a site that doesn't exist.  I don't even know how I stumbled on their music, for that matter.  What I do know is that their song "Hate Yosef" is one of the coolest songs I've heard in a long time.  It's is just straight up, bad ass rock music, a thowback to Zepplin-esque times before the word "rock" started having hypens preceding it. Check out their MySpace here and listen to "Hate Yosef"

Andrew Bird at the Hideout: Tickets on Sale 10AM Today

Fresh off selling out two shows at the 800 capacity Logan Square Auditorium, Andrew Bird quietly announced a show on January 13th at The Hideout.....which has a capacity i would guess is in the neighborhood of 150. Ought to be a good one.  Tickets go on sale today at 10am Central on Ticketweb via Hideout's website.